Micro-gravitational study made it to ISS two days after astronaut's arrival

By Charlie Brennan

Staff Writer

Posted:
05/05/2017 06:24:30 PM MDT

Updated:
05/05/2017 08:22:08 PM MDT

An image of Centaurus High School's flag and experiment aboard the International Space Station that was transmitted to Earth on Friday by astronaut Jack Fischer. (Courtesy Jack Fischer / NASA)

Astronaut Jack Fischer on Friday emailed a network of those following his progress at the International Space Station to say that he had just performed some work on an experiment sent to the spacecraft from his Lafayette alma mater, Centaurus High School.

Fischer, a 43-year-old Louisville native, said in a short note he thought people would "like to know that an alum worked on an experiment of his high school today — that's pretty rare, and a pretty awesome testament for Centaurus."

The experiment, three years in being brought to fruition, is designed to study the effects of simulated gravity on bacterial lag phase in a micro-gravitational environment.

"Jack got a chance to power it on," said Centaurus engineering teacher Brian Thomas. "I think there was some sort of issue with it last week when they first tried to plug it in. Whatever it was, it was a non-issue. It's working like a charm."

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Fischer's bulletin from 250 miles above the Earth was accompanied by a picture of the Centaurus payload, emblazoned with a Centaurus flag. He also sent an audio clip to his heavily invested fan base at his old school.

"Two years ago we had that flag in the Centaurus (attendance) office, and I remember handing Jack the flag," Thomas said. "He stopped by my house last summer, and I got a chance to pass it on to him.

"He said, 'I can only take a few things, but I'm definitely bringing the Centaurus flag.' It's cool to see it up there, and have him and the support for the project."

The first iteration of the experiment was destroyed when the SpaceX CRS-7 unmanned supply mission that was originally to take it to the ISS was lost to an explosion about 2 ½ minutes after its June 28, 2015, launch.

In rebuilding the experiment, Thomas and the students working on the project did some tweaking of its functioning,

"Since we weren't doing it from scratch, it got put together a little faster," Thomas said last month, prior to Fischer's launch "There were new design constraints. ... They were concerned that the spinning of the gears was too loud. They have to deal with that noise 24/7. They gave us a waiver on that the first time, but after the explosion they said, 'You've got time to rebuild this, let's make it quieter.' They gave us a sound meter and we had to get it under a certain sound level."

The rebuilding of the experiment took place during the 2015-16 school year. Thomas explained its purpose.

"Bacteria grows at a certain rate on Earth, and when it's in space, research has shown it grows a little bit faster, because of a number of different reasons. As it eats the bacteria food, we wanted to see if the gravitational forces were a big key player in that, or if there is something else involved. We're basically tricking it, to make it think it's on Earth," Thomas said.

"We're spinning it so that it feels 1-G; we want it to grow as if it were feeling the same gravitational forces on Earth, and compare the growth rate."

While Fischer and crew partner cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin launched April 20 and arrived at the ISS about six hours later, the experiment was part of a 7,600-pound payload that launched in an unmanned cargo spacecraft April 18 and reached the ISS on April 22.

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